MARK BARNES: A golden opportunity to be proved in SAA’s ‘golden share’ model
SOEs are a different species, and they'll need to be tackled differently to endure the public-private mixture
Strategic partners are the talk of the town. The "sale" of 51% of SAA by the government is a ground-breaking, precedent-setting development, which completely opens up the possibilities for public-private partnerships. That is a good thing. The government is selling control of a state-owned enterprise (SOE) - have you ever? (If indeed that's what it is - it would be a grave error for it to be found out not to be. Deal details are sketchy, and not final, it seems.)
If you sell control and yet maintain a minority stake, you'd better be doing that on purpose. You have to believe that you'll be better off in the hands of the new skipper to stay on the boat - in the full knowledge that it'll now sail a course not of your choosing - rather than cash in and deploy your capital elsewhere...
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